Floral Best Practices: Flamingo Kingfisher Farm

Floralife’s Spotlight Program is a series of articles about where cut flowers come from, the people who make it happen, and their floral best practices. Today we visit Kenyan grower Flamingo Kingfisher Farm. Flamingo shared with us the beauty of their flowers, as well as the sustainability, employee enrichment and community involvement efforts that have landed them in the Spotlight!

Founded in 1984, Flamingo Kingfisher Farm is a 93 hectare rose, carnation and sunflower farm located in Kenya’s Lake Naivasha region. For over 30 years Flamingo has been pioneering a number of socially responsible floral best practices, which you can find in our recent Spotlight article. Here is a preview:

Floral Best Practices: Employee Enrichment

“A happy working environment leads to a happy workforce,” so good working conditions are a focus at Flamingo. Most of the employees are permanent workers with set working hours, who receive regular skills and safety training and safety gear, as well as training on sustainable production methods. Workers are also provided bus transportation between work and home, and subsidized meals in the company café.

Floral Best Practices: Community Enrichment

Another employee benefit also helps the local community. Flamingo built a hospital in Naivasha to provide subsidized treatment to employees and their families, as well as residents of the surrounding region.

The comapny’s Charitable Trust also aids in forest preservation, support of local farmers, and protection of wildlife such as the Bongo (a type of antelope) and the endangered Rhinoceros.

Floral Best Practices: Sustainability

Our Spotlight article also recounts Flamingo efforts in water conservation and recycling, hydroponics technology, drip fertigation and efforts to limit the use of pesticides whenever possible.

Floral Best Practices: Recognition

Flamingo Kingfisher Farm efforts has received a variety of industry and NGO recognition including Fairtrade, MPS (sustainability efforts), and ETI (labor conditions). Flamingo has also received a Kenya Flower Council Gold designation for Environment management, Safety, Corporate Social Responsibility and Agricultural Practices.

Floralife is happy to shine the Spotlight on the floral best practices of Flamingo Kingfisher Farm. And this is just some of the story. Check out the rest on the Floralife Spotlight page!